The Nude Olympics Australia's bigwigs blush over a scandal while its women's soccer team bares all

For weeks now the men organizing Sydney's Olympic Games havebeen slowly and agonizingly stripped bare. A journalist wouldtear off an organizer's shoe, a member of parliament wouldsnatch a sock, then a radio commentator would unbuckle a belt,until finally a half-dozen aging executives were left naked andshivering, admitting they had misled Australia by secretlyputting aside more than 800,000 tickets to sell to the wealthyat three times face value.

Then, in the nick of time, 12 female soccer players tore off alltheir clothes in one swoop, and Australia stopped convulsingover the naked old men. Last week the Matildas, as theAustralian women's national soccer team is called, launched acalendar that goes beyond the usual coy depictions of athletesin the nude. This one features full frontal poses much racierthan the one at right--with no strategically placed props orlimbs to hide breasts and crotches.

"Whatever next?" one Sydney columnist asked. "A lap dance ofhonor at the Olympics? A free trip to a massage parlor withevery season ticket?" Reporters jammed the Matildas' pressconference, where 150 complimentary calendars went missing inminutes. The players, flanked by their supportive mums andblowups of their nude photos, said they were proud to strip todraw attention to a team that had attracted almost none when itheaded off to the World Cup in June--to be promptly undressed byopponents in two defeats and a draw. "We are not big, butch,masculine, lesbian football players," said defender Amy Taylor,who will split with her 11 teammates a small royalty for eachcalendar sold.

"If people want to call it porn, that's their problem," saidforward Katrina Boyd. "No one could make me feel low or sleazyabout this."

No, that market had already been cornered by Sydney Olympicshonchos for their naked attempt to--well, why not say it?--scalptickets. Scalp them even after the top man, Olympics ministerMichael Knight, announced that every Australian whose name wasin the barrel for the ticket lottery would have an equal chanceand the CEO of the Sydney organizing committee, Sandy Hollway,insisted no tickets had been set aside for the rich.

Then, during weeks of investigative reporting, parliamentaryhearings and talkback radio outrage, the truth came dribblingout. As few as 2% of tickets for some high-profile events hadbeen made available to the public, including just 16 premiumtickets for two nights of diving finals and only 24 spots in the3,300-seat grandstand for the men's triathlon. Granted, many ofthese seats were to go to media, IOC bigwigs, corporate sponsors(including SI) and foreign Olympic committees. But a walloping840,000 hush-hush "premium package" ticket allotments withprices starting at $30,000 had been made available to privateclubs, business leaders and other upper crusters.

When public pressure reached the snapping point, Knight and fourother honchos--Hollway was on vacation--confronted the media butrefused to utter mea culpas. "I am the ugly face of capitalism,"marketing general manager Paul Reading proclaimed. "I'm notemployed to give advice on equity; this is about raising money."FIVE BLIND MICE screamed a tabloid headline, and soon more thanhalf a million new tickets materialized for the public. Hollwaywas stripped of some of his duties, Reading was demoted, andKnight, who has large political ambitions and longs for theSydney Games to turn a profit, apologized.

Who were the fat cats who had already bought the hidden tickets?Demands for their names--and their connections to the emperorswith no clothes--were gathering steam when the Matildas, as thelocals are fond of saying, "got starkers." Never in the historyof sports, or even college dorms, have six men been so glad tosee 12 women get naked.